Top 10 useful shortcuts in Microsoft Expression Blend
How to resize workspace? How to hide and show panels? Quick zoom in and out? I am bringing you list of top 10 most useful shortcuts in Expression Blend that you can use for your Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or Silverlight based projects right away.
1. CTRL + Mouse Wheel – Zoom in or out
To zoom in or to zoom out on the design view of your workspace, put your cursor over the part you want to zoom in, press Control and while it is pressed use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out. It works just great and saves a lot of time.
Alternatively you can use classic zoom pane located at the left bottom corner of your design view.
2. TAB or F4 – View artboard only
Hide all your panels and see only artboard. This one is very handy if you need to get some free space to work on your stuff.
Tough panels are hidden, you can access them at any time simply by positioning your mouse over them and clicking and you will see them flying out.
When you want to return back to usual workspace, just press TAB or F4 again.
3. F6 – Switching between Animation and Design workspace
Sometimes you are designing, sometimes you are animating. You can switch between 2 predefined layouts in Expression Blend by pressing F6.
Of course, pressing it more times will just circulate between these two workspaces.
Main difference between workspaces is in Objects and Timeline and Interaction panel positions. Test it for yourself, I find myself using this “switching” on almost daily basis.
4. F8 (it’s F12 in Blend 3) – Show or hide Results panel
Even if this is not something that you will find yourself doing all the time, sometimes you might want (or need) to hide Results panel and to free up some additional space.
Just press F12 to show or hide Results panel.
5. CTRL+SHIFT+R – Restore default workspace settings
After you are done with messing around with panels, moving them around, pulling them off – you might want to get your workspace in default, clean and tidy space.
Put your fingers on Control, Shift and R key and impress your friends.
Oh it would be awesome to have this option available on my working desk at the end of the day 
6. Pressed SPACE – panning workspace
To pan your workspace (while you are in Design view) just press SPACE and while it is pressed you will notice that your mouse cursor now looks like hand. You can now just click and pan your workspace around.
You can also use Pan from toolbar by pressing H, but if you use SPACE method you will preserve your currently selected tool after you stop panning around.
This is handy option, especially if you are dealing with some big and high res stuff.
7. CTRL+0 – Fit your artboard to screen
After zooming in and out you might want to press Control and 0 to fit your artboard to screen.
Simply this is one of the best shortcuts in Blend.
8. CTRL+1 – Zooms the selected control to its actual size
9. CTRL+PERIOD (.) – Show Asset Library
You can always go around and click on your toolbox and show your Asset Library with controls and other resources for your solution, but you might give a try to this handy shortcut.
Pressing Control and period (.) key will show you Asset Library dialog.
10. F9 – Show or hide object handles
Sometimes you just want to get rid of those handles… If you select several objects at the same time you will see all of their handles and it can look like a real mess.
Press F9 and all those handles are gone, press it again and you will see them displayed.
Well I hope this was useful for Blend users, stay tune for Top 10 Expression Design shortcuts coming out soon on UXPassion.com
Resources
For Item# 5, you can create a batch file on your desktop to delete user.config file under the folder”%AppData%\Microsoft\Expression”
Example:
del “%AppData%\Microsoft\Expression\Blend2\user.config”
Thanks for idea on #5
This is not most often used,
press A, is select, V = select direct, … etc
then increase our speed! right!
Many thanks , it is helpfull.
Don’t forget to correct Tip 4 title (F8 to F12).
Thanks – I’ve updated the tip!